How Hard Can It Be To Become A Blogger? Part II

I wrote How Hard Can It Be to Become a Blogger? last September because I was surprised at how hard it actually is to become a blogger. In that post, I revealed my disappointing visitor/follower statistics and expressed my determination to carry on regardless. I mean, it’s not like I’ve failed, I just haven’t succeeded yet 😊.

But it’s not all about marketing and I don’t want to just write about topics that interest me, they need to be of value to my target readers, ie people over 50 who are unemployed, retired, approaching retirement or economically inactive, who are thinking about or are setting up a business.

So, I’ve been on the case, apart from the Christmastime chaos, when I spent my time shopping, cleaning, feeding people and managing the relationship between my toddler grandson and my puppy. (Hint: they both wanted my exclusive attention.)

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TRUTHS AND LIES ON SOCIAL MEDIA

We all research products and services online and often make our buying decisions based on what we read. In business, getting these decisions wrong can set you back financially, hinder your progress, or both. This post was inspired by my shattered illusions, disappointments and surprises with social media over the past few months.

ARE LIES THE NEW TRUTH?

I have learnt that to gain any useful knowledge online, you need to treat everything you read with scepticism. Has lying become the new normal? Liars get away with it because they know some of us are either naive or too busy to check out the facts.

Online research informs most of my blog posts and I always find:

  • False or unsubstantiated claims in support of a product, service, company or individual

  • Sales pitches disguised as expert analyses

In previous posts I have exposed ways that companies provide misleading or false information about themselves and also how ‘expert reviews’ are mostly published by affiliates that gain a commission from the sites they review. Although it’s really important to be aware of these practices, I now realise  that some of the measures I use to evaluate companies, products and services, such as consumer reviews, likes and number of followers can’t be trusted either.

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Can a 'Silver' like me learn social media marketing?

If you intend to start a business, it would be wise to learn about digital marketing, whether you decide to do your own, employ an expert or use an agency. It’s fine and possibly preferable to use agencies for this type of work but they can be costly and if you don’t understand it, you will not be able to evaluate their work.

This blog post is about social media marketing (SMM) and more specifically, business to consumer SMM, one of the available channels of digital marketing,

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